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While Ms Oliver was going about her duties high in New York's most iconic building, Smith was struggling to navigate his B-25 Mitchell Bomber through a pea-soup fog that had settled over the city.

In an effort to confirm his bearings and flight path to Newark airport, Smith dropped his twin-engine bomber to a dangerously low altitude.

Alarmingly, Smith discovered he had veered dangerously off course and was now flying amongst skyscrapers in midtown Manhattan.

Just before 10am, the 10-ton bomber, flying at an estimated speed of 360km/h, hit the 79th and 80th floors on the north side of the Empire State Building.

Ms Oliver, working as the attendant in elevator number six, was blown off her feet and seriously injured by the impact.

One of the B-25's engines pierced the building's art deco exterior and rocketed straight out the other side. The other crashed into elevator shaft number six, severing a number of the lift's steel cables.

Flames filled the building over several floors, and debris rained down on the streets below. Some office workers believed America was under attack from the Japanese.

Catherine O'Connor, who was working in the building, described watching one of her colleagues catch fire as the plane's jet fuel ignited.

"The plane exploded within the building. There were five or six seconds – I was tottering on my feet trying to keep my balance – and three-quarters of the office was instantaneously consumed in this sheet of flame," she said in the aftermath of the disaster.

"One man was standing inside the flame. I could see him. It was a co-worker, Joe Fountain. His whole body was on fire."

Fourteen people, including Smith and his two crewman, died in the accident.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the crash, Ms Oliver, a 20-year-old bride, was struggling with severe burns and being helped by emergency workers on the 80th floor.

Thinking they were sending her to waiting ambulances below, they loaded Ms Oliver into elevator number six. Nobody knew that the elevator cables had been cut and weakened by the plane's engine.

At around the 75th floor, the elevator began a 300m freefall, plummeting towards the ground.

Incredibly, Ms Oliver survived.

It was believed the hundreds of metres of steel cable that had fallen and gathered at the bottom of the elevator shaft had helped cushion the impact.

The Empire State Building's narrowly designed lift shafts had also softened the landing by creating a rapid compression of air, according to other theories.

Ms Oliver was cut from the mangled wreckage where doctors found she had broken her back and both legs.

Five months later Ms Oliver returned to the Empire State Building and took an elevator up to the top of the building, where she was heralded for her bravery.